US designation of Palestine Action exposes a global war on Palestine solidarity

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• Palestine Action has now been proscribed as a terrorist entity by both the UK (2025, under the Terrorism Act 2000) and the US (Wednesday, as a Specially Designated Global Terrorist) - two separate designations, months apart, on different legal grounds, treating a direct action group as equivalent to armed organisations in both jurisdictions
• The same US Treasury action also sanctioned Masar Badil, described by Treasury as a front for the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, and Autistici Inventati, an Italy-based group accused of providing digital infrastructure to pro-Palestine and left organising groups
• The move follows Secretary of State Marco Rubio telling officials from over 60 countries last month that Washington would refocus international counter-terrorism efforts on so-called "far-left terror"
• The designation comes days before seven Palestine Action defendants face a High Court hearing in Glasgow (Monday 1 September) over a 2025 protest at Donald Trump's Turnberry golf course, where prosecutors are seeking a "terror connection" for sentencing purposes despite not being charged with any terror offence
• Trump publicly branded the Turnberry protesters "terrorists" within hours of the action and held two documented phone calls with Keir Starmer in the weeks that followed, before the UK proscribed Palestine Action months later
• The UK ban is being challenged at the Supreme Court, with a hearing set for November

London — The far-left clampdown Rubio announced in Washington last month is manifesting as an anti-Palestine solidarity witch hunt hiding behind the language of counter-terrorism. The US is pursuing, arresting and sanctioning anyone who tries to hold the apartheid Israeli genocidal state to account by the use of a "far-left terror" label so wide that even a British direct action group, a Palestinian solidarity network and a tech collective are caught in the net in the same afternoon. 

Palestine Action has now been proscribed as a terrorist organisation on both sides of the Atlantic - first by Britain in 2025, now by Washington - despite the two designations coming through entirely different processes, on different legal grounds, over a year apart. What unites them is the shared logic that disrupting the supply chain of arms for a genocide passes the ever expanding threshold for terrorism.

The UK government proscribed Palestine Action first, criminalised a lawful direct action movement as terrorism, and in doing so handed Washington both a template and a justification. 

Within days of this designation, seven people who spray-painted "GAZA IS NOT 4 SALE" on Trump's Scottish golf course face a hearing at which prosecutors will ask a judge to treat their conviction as a terrorism matter, despite never charging them with one. Trump called them terrorists on Truth Social the day the story broke, then spoke to the Prime Minister twice in the following weeks. 

What unites these designations is not the groups themselves but their function. Palestine Action holds no territory and commands no army; its role has been to physically disrupt the arms trade sustaining a genocide. Masar Badil and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine represent organised Palestinian political resistance itself. To proscribe direct action, resistance and solidarity under the same "terrorism" label is to deny Palestinians political agency altogether - criminalising not just the right to resist, but the right to be supported in resisting. Aid, advocacy and direct action are being folded into the same designation as armed struggle, which leaves no legitimate channel through which Palestinians or their allies are permitted to act. This is an attempt at full-spectrum domination: strip a people of the right to resist, then strip them of anyone willing to stand with them, and call the whole apparatus counter-terrorism.

Anas Mustapha, Head of Advocacy at CAGE International, said:

"We’re witnessing a full-spectrum crackdown  of Palestine solidarity globally. Palestine Action’s activities are in the same vein as celebrated civil rights heroes who stood on the right side of history. The UK and US are upending centuries of hard won rights to protect a genocidal state they’re both complicit with. Britain wrote the playbook, and Washington is now running it against anyone, anywhere, who acts to stop a genocide - not because they threaten anyone, but because they dare to challenge those funding it."

[ENDS]